


You and Tequila

by shewasjustagirl



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Binge Drinking, College, M/M, Slightly post-college sad engineers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 11:37:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14284095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewasjustagirl/pseuds/shewasjustagirl
Summary: Rhett and Link began fooling around in college -- but only when Link was drunk. Those days are over now.





	You and Tequila

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LinksLipsSinkShips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinksLipsSinkShips/gifts).



> linkslipssinkships and I decided to have a challenge. We each wrote a fic using the phrase "I may not be your cup of tea but I'm your 10th shot of tequila" as a prompt.

They didn’t do binge drinking anymore. 

It started in their second semester at NC State, when they were no longer the greenest of freshmen, when they weren’t going home every weekend anymore. They had been invited to a house party, and for the first time since Ben’s failed attempt to throw one during their final year of high school, they went. 

“You’re breathing free air!” Rhett joked, jabbing Link in his sides. “This is exactly what you need after a breakup.”

“Whatever, man.” Link shoved Rhett away, his toothy smile giving away that he wasn’t really offended. He knew a relationship with his high school girlfriend wasn’t going to last forever, especially not after she decided to move to Tennessee for college. 

With their names written in Sharpie on plastic red cups, they made their way through the crowd, neither of them finding any of the four different students from their dorm who had extended invitations to the event. The house, sitting only a few blocks away from campus, was owned by parents of the friends of their acquaintances, and without any prior exposure to the floor plan, they popped their heads in and out of rooms, squeezing past the raucous crowd and its makeshift dance floor, until they had explored everything but the backyard.

Out in a small patch of grass near a covered swimming pool, Rhett and Link approached their first beer pong table and found their niche at the party. They laughed and drank as they became a formidable team, losing only to more seasoned upperclassmen and ending one team’s streak. 

When Rhett had had enough, he encouraged Link to stay and watch while he poured more drinks, but Link insisted they stay together. He didn’t know anyone else, even if Rhett would be easy to find in a crowd. 

That was when Rhett, tipsy and loose, let slip a question that would have been totally natural under other circumstances. Normally, Link would have agreed without a second thought. But this time, Rhett accompanied “Hey man, you wanna dance?” with one hand pinching gently at Link’s hip. 

“What are you doing, Rhett?” he’d asked, allowing for space, giving him a chance to back out without owning what he’d done. “I’m askin’ you to dance,” Rhett doubled down, taking one of Link’s hands and tugging him toward the dance floor. For the first couple of steps, Link considered giving in. It couldn’t hurt just to dance, not with that many people around. 

But if they didn’t know any of them, there _were_ a lot of people around. “Rhett, stop!” Link ripped his hand from Rhett’s loose grip. “I don’t know what’s got into you, but you’re not my cup of tea, you know?” Link stormed out of the party, and for twenty long, silent minutes, Rhett followed him across campus, keeping a half-step behind. Back in the safety and quiet of their dorm, Link lay awake in bed, and to a snoring Rhett, he mumbled, “Maybe if I were drunker.”

And he had gotten drunker. He was introduced to tequila one afternoon, drinking far more in the fruity cocktails than he thought he had. That first time, when Link came back to their dorm drunk, when he got handsy, when he pushed Rhett onto his bunk, he left them both shaken and confused.

But Rhett wanted him, and he prayed for Link to find more places to drink excessively, interspersed with his duelling prayers for Link to want him when they were sober and for his feelings for Link to disappear altogether.

He learned not to expect Link to make a move in the main room of the parties. He learned not to touch first. He learned that there was only one reason to peek your head into bedrooms at house parties. Drinking led to a whole host of other things. To a shift in their relationship, especially when the lights went out. Especially when they went to parties without their girlfriends.

 

But they didn’t binge drink anymore, they hadn’t since they graduated. It had been months since Link had touched him. They were engineers now. Their lives were about work and wives and trying not to lose their souls to the crushing weight of responsibility. 

So when Link called, asking if they could meet up tonight, Rhett had agreed, assuming they’d be discussing an idea for a video or having a beer to commiserate succumbing to the grind. Their days of fooling around were behind them, another addition to the list of things he couldn’t change. Maybe they’d just drive around, pretend it was the old days, even if neither of them drove an old beat up truck anymore.

Rhett didn’t expect Link to kiss him. Not in the Dairy Queen parking lot on the outskirts of Fuquay-Varina. Link had driven here, after all, and, with the exception of a few mornings when Link had felt particularly apologetic for leading him on, Rhett hadn’t gotten more than a peck from a sober Link. 

“Dude, seriously? Let me smell your breath.” Rhett turned Link’s face up, taking hold of his chin. “You know it’s dangerous to drive like…”

“I’m not drunk, man!” Link took a step back, frowning as he took in the image of the man before him. “I just wanted to see you. And you look awful.”

“Oh, thanks a lot,” Rhett scoffed, scratching at his hair and knowing he’d done much less than normal lately to keep up his appearance. “And you’re, what? The IBM poster boy?”

“Pretty much,” Link grinned, retaking the step toward Rhett and taking his hands. “Come on. Go for a drive with me.”

Rhett knew where they’d end up before they got in the car. It was getting cold already, colder than it should be in early October, but they both stripped off their shoes and socks as they made the short hike down to the river, to their spot by the river.

“You said you want to talk to me.” 

“Yeah, I do, sit down,” Link pointed to a dry spot on a flat rock and took a seat there, waiting for Rhett to join him. “Come on, please?”

The last few months had changed things between them. Their drunken trysts, Link’s drunken come-ons, had always felt more motivated by proximity than by anything deeper. Rhett had accepted, years ago, that if he and Link weren’t roommates, anything Link might feel for him would quickly disappear. 

Despite all this, he sat on the rock. He left his hand in place when Link covered it with his own. He allowed himself to lean into another kiss. And then he asked, “Are we finally going to talk about it?”

“I think we have to,” Link said flatly, chasing Rhett’s lips as he turned his body, pulling away in order to face Link head-on. “I don’t see this Rhett and Link Enterprises or whatever we’re going to call it going anywhere if we don’t.”

“You don’t have to kiss me right now. You don’t have to pretend,” Rhett frowned, folding his hands in his lap. “I know you never wanted any of that before your tenth shot of tequila or whatever.”

Link ducked his head, the eye contact providing too much scrutiny, tying his tongue. His voice was small when he finally answered, his eyes focused on twisting the shiny gold band around his left ring finger, “That’s not true.”

Rhett’s eyes were boring holes into Link’s temple, and the concentrated silence became unbearable. “I was scared. I was scared and trying to play it cool.”

“And that explains you getting drunk and jumping me? I’m ‘not your cup of tea’ when you’re sober, Link, you said it yourself.” He didn’t expect to get angry. He had made up his mind years ago that he would take what he could get. But the dam had fallen, and with communication came all the feelings his refusal to bring up this conversation on his own had withheld. 

The full moon shone on them, allowing Rhett to see when Link’s eyes finally focused on him again. “I’ve never been pretending. I wasn’t before and I’m not now. I don’t know how you’ll ever believe me, but…”

Rhett lunged forward, cutting Link off with a kiss, one he’d initiated. One a sober Link fully reciprocated, tugging on Rhett’s collar and pulling him on top of him on the rock. Rhett’s hands on either side of Link’s torso steadied him as he looked down at all he thought he wanted and, one last time, pressed his lips to Link’s. 

“I wish you had said something sooner, Link.” He pushed himself up and off of the rock, extending a hand to the prone Link and helping him stand. “Us doing this can’t be in the plan anymore.”

Link pulled up outside the Dairy Queen, aligning his car’s passenger door with the driver’s side of Rhett’s car. “I…” he began, but the words wouldn’t come. There was no appropriate eulogy for a relationship that had never really begun, and without a true ending, there was no use leaving Rhett with any final words. 

“I’ll call you. We’ll work on something,” Rhett tried, cracking open his door.

“Rhett and Link Enterprises?”

“Yeah, maybe,” he stood, holding the car’s door open. “See you around, man.”

**Author's Note:**

> Read [LLSS's fic here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14284083).
> 
> Your comments and kudos would be very much appreciated! <3
> 
> And come find me on Tumblr as [clemwasjustagirl](http://clemwasjustagirl.tumblr.com/) if you're into that kind of thing.


End file.
